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When I was a boy I liked to visit my grandfather. He put me on his horse and led the horse around his old house. He told me stories from the Bible and about Jewish traditions and holidays. I don’t think my grandfather cooked for himself. There was a stove in his house, but he only used it for heating. His main food was milk and bread and he had meals with us on holidays. He used to say that I would become a hazan (cantor) – I sang nicely when I was a child. I loved my grandfather Abraham even more than my parents. We were very good friends. In the early 1919 my grandfather Abraham was murdered by bandits in Rzhyschev. I can still remember it as if it happened yesterday. I pressed my finger to the window glass to melt the ice and looked whether my grandfather was coming home. He went out to give some food to the horse.
Many Jews were hiding in our house in 1920s. The situation was very hard: the power switched from the white, to the red or Petlura units. All of a sudden a poor old woman came to our house screaming “Come there – they are killing your father!” I was 6 years old and was crying and begging that somebody went to my grandfather’s rescue. But everybody was afraid. The bandits murdered my grandfather with planks from the fence. He happened to help an injured man the day before on his way back from Kagarlyk. That man was a Jew and a Bolshevik. When we all ran to see what happened my grandfather was lying on the snow with no clothes on and there was blood all around him. He was covered with frost. All his neighbors and relatives were looking around in fear of bandits. My grandfather had a piece of cloth on his chest where the bandits wrote a message to bury him after 3 days passed. My grandfather was laying near his house for 3 day before he was buried. Since then I've had negative feelings towards my relatives from Rzhyschev, because they didn’t come to my grandfather’s rescue and because they didn’t bury him for 3 days. That is why I know so little about them. I saw my grandfather in my dreams for a long time after he died.
Of all his children I only know my mother’s sister Fira, born in 1887. She lived in Kiev. Her husband was a driver. He didn’t live long and my aunt had tenants in her basement in Podol to earn her living. Her three children’s were deaf and dumb and went to a special school. This is all my mother told me about Fira. During the war she was in evacuation in the Ural with my mother. She died in 1947.
Many Jews were hiding in our house in 1920s. The situation was very hard: the power switched from the white, to the red or Petlura units. All of a sudden a poor old woman came to our house screaming “Come there – they are killing your father!” I was 6 years old and was crying and begging that somebody went to my grandfather’s rescue. But everybody was afraid. The bandits murdered my grandfather with planks from the fence. He happened to help an injured man the day before on his way back from Kagarlyk. That man was a Jew and a Bolshevik. When we all ran to see what happened my grandfather was lying on the snow with no clothes on and there was blood all around him. He was covered with frost. All his neighbors and relatives were looking around in fear of bandits. My grandfather had a piece of cloth on his chest where the bandits wrote a message to bury him after 3 days passed. My grandfather was laying near his house for 3 day before he was buried. Since then I've had negative feelings towards my relatives from Rzhyschev, because they didn’t come to my grandfather’s rescue and because they didn’t bury him for 3 days. That is why I know so little about them. I saw my grandfather in my dreams for a long time after he died.
Of all his children I only know my mother’s sister Fira, born in 1887. She lived in Kiev. Her husband was a driver. He didn’t live long and my aunt had tenants in her basement in Podol to earn her living. Her three children’s were deaf and dumb and went to a special school. This is all my mother told me about Fira. During the war she was in evacuation in the Ural with my mother. She died in 1947.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Rahmil Shmushkevich Biography